By: Mackenzie Wright | October 22, 2018

A young black girl who goes to a predominantly white school in Texas reports that on several occasions, her classmates harassed her and made offensive remarks about her race. They repeatedly called the girl an 'ape', pretended to whip her like a slave, belittled her and shunned her.

The white students have been punished; however, the school refuses to say this was a bullying incident.

A 12-year-old girl from Tippit Middle School in Georgetown, Texas called her father and asked him, "Hey dad, is it racist when people call a black person an ape?"

That's when the horrific incident came to light. Some investigating found that the anonymous little girl was being humiliated and harassed on a regular basis by her white classmates.

In one incident, the kids grabbed the girl's phone, looked up pictures of apes and told the girl she looked like an ape. Later that day, a white girl refused to sit next to the black girl, saying, "I don’t sit next to apes.”

On another occasion, a couple of white girls followed the black girl around pretending to whip her with a long piece of trash. The girl said words to the effect of, “You’re my slave now!”

In yet another incident, the African-American girl and a white boy got into a dispute in the cafeteria. The white boy responded, "It wasn’t me. You’re not really going to take the word of a black person over the word of a white person, are you?”

The school conceded that the children involved exhibited 'substantiated misbehavior' and they were disciplined accordingly. A spokesperson for the school would only note that disciplinary action had been taken, but would not detail what it was.

“In addition to other disciplinary measures, [the] students involved were counseled regarding their behavior, were required to complete relevant ‘No Place for Hate’ lessons, and complete community service,” said Suzanne Marchman, the school district director of community engagement and communications, to the HuffPost in an email.

The school denies that the girl was bullied. “He said they didn’t determine that she had a belief that she was in physical danger, so they did not feel it was bullying,” said Robert Ranco, the girl's father, who also happens to be a civil rights attorney.

“Those are words,” said Ranco. “It’s hard to know exactly what happened. One thing I know didn’t happen was they didn’t turn this into a learning opportunity for everyone involved. I can excuse children for being ignorant, but this was a missed opportunity in that we all should’ve been able to sit down and talk about it.”

Ranco is pulling his daughter out of the school and plans to send her elsewhere next year. When his family addressed the abusive actions in their home, they took a different approach than the school did.

“We told her these kids learned it at home, the school got it wrong and she didn’t deserve to be treated like that,” the dad explains. “Now we move on from here.”